Pursuing the allure of combat: an ethnography of violence amongst Iraqi Shi’I combatants fighting ISIS

Abstract

The social sciences speak of violence through its meaning, performances, manifestations and representations; however, the inner workings of violence are less explored. In order to suggest a different mode of seeing violence, I explore the inner workings of violence through the pleasures of and fun among Shi'i volunteer combatants. I apply Walter Benjamin's motion of pure means to explain how violence becomes self-referential and nonrepresentational via combat-zone ethnography amongst Iraqi Shi'i militants who fought against ISIS in Iraq. I address the fine line between pleasure and fun in order to highlight the inner workings of violence during combat and to encourage a fresh bottom-up anthropological perspective in assessing the parameters of the persistence and resilience of volunteer combatants. My approach advocates moving beyond recruitment and ideological interpolation by questioning the allure of combat through an ontological framework that includes combatants' perspectives and narratives. Martyrdom and battlefield delightsDo you know the 240 mm canon? … I just love its fury. … I am an artillery guy. Artillery is the real fun.Salim continued talking about the features of the 240 mm canon while he excitedly packed his bag before leaving for the battle of Mosul. He was a 21-year-old young man from the small city of Hillah but he knew much more about artillery than his seasoned combat-experienced father who served in the Iraqi Army during the reign of Saddam. Salim was a volunteer combatant who divided his time between university and fighting alongside the Shi'i forces against ISIS in Iraq. His jubilance and constant smiles enabled me to ask further questions of him every time I met him. I was impressed that his smile never vanished while he spoke of battlefield memories, even though he lost his brother in the battle of Fallujah. I never heard words such as "martyrdom", "Allah" or "Islam" from him whenever he spoke about the combat despite his firm dedication to Shi'i Islam. After months of frequent conversations with him I sensed that the war, the combat, the gun and death were always humorous tropes of his stories. He spoke of combat with such a delight that I sometimes doubted his experiences and how much I should trust

Accessing Things of Conflicts

“…The rise of ISIS, fall of Mosul in Iraq in June 2014, and the occupation of some strategic areas in Syria by ISIS brought about a wave of mobilization of able-bodied Shia men who joined the fight. Most Shia fighters responded to the call of Ayatollah Sistani, the highest Shia authority in Iraq (Saramifar 2019). They were a mixture of different nationalities organized under the banner of Hashd ul Sha'bi in Iraq or Defa' ul Vatani in Syria.…”